Quick Specs

Publisher's Description

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From Arainia Solutions:
Gizmo Drive is a virtual device simulator which allows you to create password protected hard disk images with its proprietary GDRIVE format. Gizmo Drive also supports a number of standard image formats including: ISO, VHD, BIN, IMG, NRG, CCD, MDS, and MDF. These images can be mounted to any of the 26 virtual devices made available by Gizmo Drive's virtual device driver. When an image is mounted, it appears as an actual hard drive or CD/DVD-ROM device in Windows Explorer. These devices can be used to achieve a superior performance increase whenever a CD/DVD-ROM disc is extracted to its ISO form and mounted from the hard drive instead. Virtual devices are great for archiving purposes as well, and generally they are good at freeing up desk space by eliminating the need of having discs scattered all over the office.

What's new in this version:

Version 2.7.9 may include unspecified updates, enhancements, or bug fixes.

-Absolutely free - no ads/spyware/etc.-Clean, minimalist interface - very easy to use-Virtual devices work without a hitch, appear appropriately in "My Computer"-As effective as, if not more so than, non-free alternatives

Cons

None that I can find

Summary

For me, what sets this software apart from the rest is simple: It's incredibly well designed. I believe the engineers at Arainia Solutions think much differently about the end-user experience than those of more mainstream applications, the latter of which I believe tend to focus more on the number of gimmicks rather than the end result. Gizmo Drive performs exceedingly well while asking for nothing (except for a modest donation). It does exactly what I need it to quickly and intuitively with a beautifully minimalist interface and hardly any degradation to the performance of the OS environment.

Where I think Arainia really shines is in Gizmo Central, which is the core component needed to run Drive, as well as handful of other similarly effective applications from Arainia, such as the also free text/hex/binary editor appropriately called Editor. Central also comes with a built-in, highly flexible app launcher called Toolbar which seamlessly integrates the other components included in the bundle, including Drive. I believe that Toolbar deserves a review of its own that I'll reserve for my review on the core component, Central, that I would rate just as highly.

I highly recommend Google Drive if you are in need of free, minimalist, flexible and robust software for virtual drive management to mount and burn disc images. Where I couldn't be pressed to pay even less than ten dollars for similar mainstream solutions, I am happy to willingly donate much more than that to support the obviously talented engineers who created Gizmo Drive.

I looked at the reviews of the various virtual drive programs and decided to try this one. (I downloaded it directly from the Arania Solutions web site.) So far so good. I just needed a virtual drive program to mount an .iso image, and it does that without any problem. And it's free! No viruses or adware. You install the "Gizmo Manager" and select which components you want to include. I just wanted the "Gizmo Drive" so that's all I installed. I would recommend this software to a friend. Thank you Arainia Solutions.

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